About Sevenoaks ACE

Monday, 12 March 2012

March Newsletter

News from Sevenoaks ACE

March 2012

Results Published | Your Likes, Dislikes and Wants

We have now published the results of the likes, dislikes and wants survey that we ran in January and February. As an “open ended” piece of data collection where residents could state, in free format, what they thought about these aspects, it was not particularly scientific, but it has highlighted some perceptions of issues which we will investigate more thoroughly in our quantitative survey later this year.

Next Steps...

Development of the full survey is now well underway. Using ideas, comments and perceptions highlighted by the likes, dislikes and wants, we are putting together a quantitiatve survey to gain better understanding of people's views about secondary school provision for the Sevenoaks area. We hope to distribute this survey to all families in the Sevenoaks area including surrounding villages and towns who would have access to secondary school provision in the town. For children of primary and secondary school age this is relatively straight forward in that we can hopefully use school's to provide a distribtuion channel. Families with pre-school age children present a greater problem. If you or somebody you know is involved with a nursery, playgroup, pre-school or other organisation and would be willing to help us with the distribtion of our survey then please get in touch.

Why is this important?

KCC has acknowledged that population increases over the next few years are going to put tremendous strain on secondary school places for children in the Sevenoaks areas. The population in T.Wells is set to increase by around 200 11 year olds in 2013! Such a high proportion of Sevenoaks children have historically attended schools in T.Wells; grammar, faith and non-selective schools - they are simply going to be pushed out of catchment on distance rules.

KCC must provide sufficient capacity. It is a legal obligation. Whilst there are two proposals on the table, neither is yet a guarantee of future capacity, and if for some reason, neither is able to happen, then plan B will have to be put in place, and quickly. Any decision over a free school, a grammar school or a plan 'B' will be hugely strengthened by a body of evidence of the demands of local parents.

Get in Touch

Do you have a little spare time to help our team. There is a huge amout of work in the administration of the survey which, if shared out could be cut into manageable chunks. If you feel strongly about the future of secondary education in Sevenoaks, then please get in touch and see how you might help.